


Allnight

by Penelopiad



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, M/M, Weirdness, possible amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 10:11:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10897176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penelopiad/pseuds/Penelopiad
Summary: The end of the world tastes like licorice





	Allnight

**Author's Note:**

> written as two different ficlets on tumblr back in 2014-15.  
> 

 

 

_i_

 

 

So. Here’s the thing. The end of the world tastes like licorice.

It’s sticky, tar black rivers across the earth, yellow burnt grass that brittles and crumbles under any weight, sometimes even just the wind, and yet, it’s sweet, sweet air, gummy like the worst kind of Halloween loot. 

And it never ends. It’s hills upon hills of this: sulphuric-like dust blowing over a barren land, and thick black acidic goo filling all its crevices, like veins, all under a sky streaked purple like a bruise behind clouds limned in blood.

It might be Hell. It might be Earth. It might be somewhere in between, or a step into the shittiest most boring fucking parallel universe, no one knows. 

Not that there’s anyone to ask. 

No one except Tyler, who says it’s the End Of The World, with capital letters in his voice, and frankly, that’s good enough for Jamie.

The All-Night rests, as usual, between this hill and the next. And they find it, as usual, right before sundown, with the red of its sign and the white neon lights inside all spilling onto the ground while the sun goes down behind the black hills to the east and makes the sky open up and bleed like a wound. 

“Five days as usual,” Tyler says, walking up beside Jamie and looking down into the small valley at the convenience store. Now that the wind’s died down, they can even hear the faint buzzing of the fluorescent sign. 

They drop their bags on the counter beside the cash register and Jamie digs around his for the can of spray paint he’s been carrying since that first All-Night. Tyler goes in search of their dinner.

The door chimes when Jamie reopens it to spray a large orange X on the wall beside it--loud and discordant and swallowed up by the night. He’s quick to close the door again and lock it. The nights are always noisier than the days. He hates those skittering sounds, like cockroaches. 

They have bacon-flavoured beef jerky (aisle 2), stringed cheese (aisle 2), rice crackers (aisle 1), and a Mars bar each (in front of the counter), all washed down with a Coke (from the fridges at the back). 

Then Tyler opens a pack of cigarettes from the rack behind the counter, gets _The Italian Millionaire’s Assassin Virgin Bride_ from the magazine display, and settles himself to read. They’re on their fifth re-read right now. It gets surprisingly deeper with each readthrough--hidden depths and all that. Jamie still thinks Ophelia’s an idiot, but he guesses it’s still pretty badass when she saves Luigi from a group of Mexican ninjas. Tyler likes the porn, because of course he does.

Jamie watches him read from where he sits on the floor with his back to a Skittles box, smiles when Tyler waggles his eyebrows at him as he says, “his solid manhood entered her,” but mostly, Jamie just likes the sound of his voice. It’s the only voice he’s heard for weeks now beside his own. The only face he’s seen, too, and sometimes he wants to punch him, sometimes he thinks he could just tear Tyler apart with his bare hands for being him and no one else, never anyone else. Just him him him all the time, and never enough to fill the gaping hole inside Jamie where something used to be. Something important, he thinks. Something beautiful, maybe. 

But mostly, he wants Tyler to never stop talking because Jamie has no idea what he’ll do if Tyler stops. If it’s only Jamie and the tar rivers and the cockroaches. And the All-Nights. 

They sleep curled up into each other into the small space behind the counter with their coats over their heads to hide the lights. The All-Night never sleeps. 

Jamie startles awake, immediately aware that Tyler isn’t behind him, cold air in the space where he usually is, all warmth along Jamie’s back.

“Sorry,” Tyler says, popping his head over the counter and smiling down at Jamie. He’s still got sleep lines over his cheek and his hair’s a disaster. It makes Jamie run a hand through his own, still unused at how short it is since Tyler cut it for him with a pair of scissors from a travel sewing kit (aisle 4) three All-Nights back. 

“What are you doing?” Jamie asks, sitting up, then standing up clumsily, legs all cramped up.

Tyler shows him his can of spray paint. “Went out for a piss,” he says (the toilet at the back is always clogged). “Realized you’d forgotten to put the X on.”

Jamie stops breathing, inhale cut short and sharp like he’s been punched in the solar plexus, like he’s been hit into the boards. And that thought--that thought pulls on--makes him--

“Tyler,” he says, heel of his hand pushing on his chest where his heart’s beating too fast and painful in his ribcage. “Tyler, I didn’t.”

Tyler’s eyes go wide. “You must--”

“No. No, I didn’t.”

There’s a long silence then where they just look at each other, with the weak daylight coming in and making the gilded edges of the lottery scratch tickets on the counter between them shimmer. (Once, nine All-Nights back, Tyler scratched them all. He didn’t win the jackpot once). 

“Jamie--”

“Yeah. Yeah.” He takes a deep breath. “Yeah.”

Tyler puts the can of paint very slowly and very carefully on the counter. “I’ll find breakfast,” he says, voice neutral, looking at his fingers on the edge of the counter. “It’s going to rain today.”

It always rains the first day after finding the All-Night. Five days after leaving the other All-Night. Right before nightfall. 

There’s only one thing Jamie can think of in the face of that.

He kisses Tyler.

He kisses Tyler over a can of Chef Boyardee, tongue curling ‘round the tomato taste, leaning into him with his hand on the white linoleum floor, under the white neon lights, in aisle 3 of the All-Night. He kisses Tyler between a row of Pringles and one of kitchen cleaners, smelling the ammonia like the floor’s just been washed. He kisses Tyler with his hands on Tyler’s neck, thumbs under his jaw, while it rains a fire-red rain from an angry sky and the tar rivers all catch fire and the white linoleum and the white lights and all the edges of the All-Night blaze bright in reflection like a mouth ready to devour them. 

He kisses Tyler because it’s the End Of The World with capital letters. And there’s no X on the door. 

He kisses Tyler.

 

 

_ii_

 

 

The End Of The World is boring as fuck.

There’s just no two ways about it. Jamie and Tyler are stuck on the smallest little world in the universe. There’s them, the tar rivers, the skittering sounds in the night. There’s the All-Night. And there’s the five-days walk to circumnavigate it all and find themselves back to where they began. 

It was easier when they could ignore the pattern.

Once, they decided to stay in the All-Night for as long as they could. They ate all the food and drank everything, and only then did they leave. Five days later it was like they had never been there, everything the same. 

Once, they set fire to it. For fun. Just to see. They watched the flames devour the walls, electric sign crashing to the ground with a metallic groan, and it was the most beautiful thing Jamie had ever seen. And five days later it was like they had never been there. 

They tried leaving at different times. They tried leaving separately. They tried leaving in opposite directions. They tried over-sleeping on the way, dragging their feet, staying put longer than they should, walking through the nights.

It never mattered. Five days later they still found themselves on the same hill at sundown overlooking the All-Night. It’s the same sky, the same place, the same neon sign buzzing in the silence before the skittering begins.

So they fuck a lot.

The All-Night has lube. And condoms. Though, as Jamie’s being fucked against the counter, he does wonder why they even bother with them. What the fuck does it matter, really? But then, Tyler shifts his hips and stills, deep inside Jamie, grinding slow and sweet, and Jamie stops thinking. 

He grabs the edge of the counter in front of him as leverage to push back, fuck himself on Tyler’s dick, and Tyler lets him, hands on Jamie’s hips, guiding him.  
He comes all over the gum packets and doesn’t bother to clean. The All-Night will take care of it.

Jamie used to think that the All-Night was evil--like the purple sky and the red-blood rain and the skittering in the dark. But now he thinks the All-Night protects them. It feeds them, shelters them. It’s there no matter what before the rain comes. The one that sends the rivers on fire.

“I don’t know, man,” Tyler says when Jamie tells him, both of them naked, sweaty skin sticky on the cool linoleum of aisle three. “Maybe it wants us to stay. Maybe it just wants to trap us. Maybe there’s something else out there it doesn’t want us to see.”

Maybe.

Jamie dreams of ice. He doesn’t remember ever seeing ice in his life, but he knows that’s what it is. He dreams of ice, of the air filled with scratching sounds, like blades. It’s cool, there, always cool the way it’s always hot here. Tar and fire.

Once, Jamie woke up with tears on his cheeks. He turned his face into his arm to wipe them off, something achey inside of him, in that space where there’s something missing. The air was barely breathable under the coats they put over their heads, and he’d curled his fists around the hems, only staying put because he didn’t want to wake Tyler behind him, with his mouth breathing steady on the back of Jamie’s neck.

“I wish I’d known you before,” Tyler says, meaning before they both got stuck here at The End Of The World. “Maybe you weren’t so boring.” He says it with a smile, widening his legs where he’s sitting on the counter, elbow on the cash register.

It’s raining out and the fiery reflections bounce off the white edges of the All-Night and across his skin. Jamie thinks he might love him.

“Fuck off,” he says, instead, but steps closer.

Tyler’s smile widens and he unbuttons his jeans and says, “Suck my dick and I might change my mind,” but then “No, wait,” as Jamie’s hands run up his thighs. “Kiss me first.”

He kisses Tyler.

 

 


End file.
